Mikkel Birkegaard - The Library of Shadows

'But what if he doesn't want to participate? What if he chooses… wrong? What then? Are you going to force him?' asked Katherina.

'Perhaps,' replied Iversen. 'It's been done before. Not recently, but there have been examples when a reading was carried out against the listener's will. In the old days it was used to constrict members in our own ranks who opposed the Society. Not something we're proud of, and it looked like a real torture scene, using straps and gags.' He sighed. 'We just have to hope that it won't go that far.'

'That might be really cool,' exclaimed Pau, who then hastened to add, 'I don't mean with Luca's son, but with someone else, not a volunteer. Reading for ordinary people is too easy; they're like cattle that just need a little shove. But to try it on someone who offers real resistance…'

'You're too much, Pau,' Katherina told him.

'Hey, maybe you'd like to volunteer? I could find something to read to you, maybe even something romantic?'

'I'm sure you could, but shouldn't you be doing the exercises that Iversen gave you first?'

Pau's crooked smile vanished and he muttered something unintelligible.

'All right then,' Iversen interjected. 'What do you say we close up for the evening?'

For once the other two were in agreement and quickly disappeared out of the door while Iversen made one last round before he too left Libri di Luca.

Katherina pumped hard on the pedals of her bike as she rode away from the antiquarian bookshop. With a shake of her head she reproached herself. She ought to know better than to let herself be provoked by Pau, but just like siblings, they both knew which buttons to push to rile the other, and a defensive response quickly turned to attack after the first words were uttered.

Her mountain bike carried her from the Vesterbro district towards Nшrrebro. Nimbly she rushed along in the late evening traffic, meticulously timing her speed to the changing of the traffic lights and taking the corners largely without slowing down.

Maybe the sibling comparison was more apt than she wanted to admit. In a sense she had been an only child in the shop with Luca and Iversen until Pau turned up like an unwanted little brother. It hadn't been easy for her to cede territory, and deep inside she felt a bit guilty about not giving him a warmer welcome.

In the area around Elmegade she rode the wrong way along a one-way street, keeping close to the parked cars or moving onto the pavement when a vehicle appeared, heading in the opposite direction. Several times she cast a glance over her shoulder, but she couldn't see anyone following her. At Sankt Hans Torv she cut across the square in front of the cafйs and tuned off Blegdamsvej down Nшrre Allй.

No doubt their squabbles also had something to do with age. Pau was seven years younger than she was, but mentally he was even younger, in her opinion. Everything centred around him and his needs. His training came before everything else. She shook her head again. Maybe she was just jealous.

Katherina swerved onto the pavement and stopped a couple of metres further along, in front of a grey building with white window frames. There were lights on in only two of the flats; in one the curtains were drawn, but through the other windows she could catch a glimpse of a white plaster ceiling from which hung a big chandelier with real candles.

The fact was that a lot had changed since Pau had started coming to Libri di Luca. The balance had shifted. Nowhe was the baby of the family while she, not without some pride, had become someone they could count on, and someone who could take care of herself. But the balance would shift again with Jon's return – the question was: to which side?

After parking her bike in the entryway, she checked once again that she wasn't being observed before she pushed open the front door and disappeared into the stairwell. Without switching on the light she headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. On the fifth floor she stopped outside a panelled door painted grey. The brass plate was clearly legible in spite of the dark, and even though she was unable to read it, she knew what it said: Centre for Dyslexia Studies (By Appointment Only).

Katherina pressed the bell twice, the first time longer than the second, and waited. In a moment she heard footsteps behind the door, and then the sound of a bolt being slid back. The door opened slightly and a strip of light shot out into the hall, capturing her in its glare. The light seemed especially bright since her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark in the stairwell and she blinked, holding her hand up to her face.

'Come in,' said a woman's voice, and the door opened wide.

Katherina stepped into a long, beige-coloured hallway with rows of brass hooks lining the walls. They were almost all taken by jackets and other outdoor garments, but she found an empty hook for her coat.

The woman who had let her in closed the door and turned to face her. She was in her mid-forties and a bit stout around the waist, which she tried to hide under a black dress. Her face was dominated by a pair of sturdy glasses and framed by light-brown hair which seemed a little artificial in the sharp glare coming from a row of halogen spotlights.

'Well?'

Katherina caught the other woman's glance and nodded. 'He's going to be good – better than his father.'

Jon woke a few seconds before the clock radio switched on.

At first he wasn't sure where he was. The bedroom's bare white walls and ceiling merged into one, looking like a dome of snow as he lay on his back inside an igloo. It was cold too. The duvet had slid off onto the floor during the night, and the crumpled sheet bore witness to a night of uneasy slumber. He remembered he'd had trouble calming down. For a long time he had lain in bed pondering what had happened in the antiquarian bookshop. Right now Iversen's explanation, the demonstration and the visions that had overwhelmed him when he was alone in the library all seemed unreal and far away. At one point he'd got up to find the book,Fahrenheit 451, which was in his jacket pocket. Tangible proof that it had all happened, but it was just an ordinary book that didn't presume to be anything else.

It was a long time since he'd read stories in bed. As a child he had loved it, an experience surpassed only by having Luca read a goodnight story to him – preferablyPinocchio, and preferably in Italian. This copy ofFahrenheit 451 was a Danish translation, and when he read through the first chapter again, he discovered that the text was significantly more choppy and jolting than was his impression during the demonstration. The colour of the girl's hair wasn't mentioned at all; it wasn't red, as he had so vividly pictured it.

Jon turned his head towards the nightstand where he had placed the book. It was still there, bulging a bit because of the worn pages. The time on the clock radio next to the book shifted at that moment to 7:00, and the voice of a tired DJ seeped out of the speaker, reciting the latest news. Unrest in Israel, absurd political arguments in the debate about immigrants, a post office robbery. Not until the monotone voice began summarizing the results of a study about children's reading abilities did Jon raise himself up on his elbows to listen. Danish children were apparently worse readers than children in neighbouring countries – a development that the Minister of Education found worrisome and unacceptable. Jon sank down onto his back and closed his eyes with a sigh. Next week they would come out with another study proving just the opposite.

The DJ was replaced by another, a cheerful morning-type who started spewing inanities that roused Jon to get out of bed. He turned on the coffee-maker and went through his morning routine: showering, shaving, drinking coffee, ironing a shirt, knotting his tie, and more coffee. The habitual tasks calmed him, and on his way out it was the day ahead of him that preoccupied his thoughts rather than what had happened the night before.